The present invention relates to practice equipment for the martial arts and, more particularly, to a novel multi-part karate practice board for hand and foot strikes where all parts are reusable to minimize waste and expense.
Karate practitioners frequently break wooden boards or like members in order to develop and demonstrate powerful hand and foot strikes. One board or a stack of boards is supported at its opposite edges, generally with its grain running parallel to these edges, and is struck medially by the foot or the hand. If the strike is sufficiently powerful and properly executed, the board or boards will break in two. In the past, boards thus broken have been discarded thus creating a substantial amount of waste product. Since a typical karate practitioner thus may destroy many boards each day, as many as 10, 2.5 centimeter thick boards at a single blow, karate practice can be unduly expensive and wasteful. Also wooden boards tend to vary unpredictably in their resistance to severing force so that, in the past, the karate practitioner has had no calibrated gauge of the force he is capable of delivering.
Various types of more permanent and uniform types of karate striking boards made from synthetic plastics have been developed in the past, and typical examples are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,004,799, and 4,052,056. In the 056', the insert parts are of a severable variety but cannot be reused once severed, and hence the insert parts disclosed in this prior patent must be discarded. In the 799' patent, a key and slot type connection is provided to permit selective adjustment of the holding force so that an adjustable required breaking force is needed to enable the pine board members to be separated through the application of hand and foot karate strikes thereto. The karate board disclosed in the 799' patent has wood or pine board members at opposite ends, and synthetic plastic insert parts mounted there between and held in place by the key and slot structure as described.
It is believed that my new karate striking board kit and karate board is distinctly advantageous over the above described prior art for no wooden components are used, and the kit and its components are totally reusable for subsequent practice exercises since the rigid and insert parts are all made from a suitable synthetic plastic. The insert parts can be selectively assembled with the rigid parts to create different board strengths without having the necessity of adjusting keys of the type shown in the 799' patent and the like to create striking boards of varying strengths. Since all parts are of a plastic construction, and since the joints between my rigid parts and the insert part are severable and reassemblable or rejoinable, all components can be reused without waste.
There is only one joint that is separable upon delivery of a karate blow according to an important feature of my invention. My insert part or piece stays assembled with one of the rigid parts and does not detach from one rigid part while detaching from another rigid part when the board is subjected to a karate blow at its flexible joint in contrast to the prior patented art when the insert detaches from both rigid parts. This is a contrast to the karate board shown in the 799' patent where patentee states that it is important that his key 9 does not remain attached to his rigid parts after delivery of a karate blow (See column 5, lines 55-57).